Story of the Year
by ancarett
Summary: When her world starts to fall apart, Lois won't stop trying to put the pieces back together.  Spoilers for the season 9 finale, "Salvation".


_And I heard them say the end is near_

Strange happenings took over the television updates. As communication satellites went out, leaving overloaded underseas cables to carry the news, reports from all over the world still spoke of cryptic symbols burnt into buildings, monuments and mountainsides. It didn't take Lois Lane to figure out that these occurrences was somehow related to, but not directly involving, the Blur.

But it would take Lois Lane to put all the pieces together.

_the New York Times said it's the story of the year_

She swung by _The Planet_ long enough to review a few files from her personal archives and pick up a priority envelope from Perry White that held nothing but a plane ticket to Nairobi and a brief note to the effect that if she didn't get on that plane, she wasn't the reporter he thought she was.

Lois stuffed the ticket in her bag. Part of her wanted to rise to the challenge but another part insisted that the answer to these great mysteries, as well as the key to her own life, lay right here in Metropolis. She printed a few files, grabbed the papers and hightailed it out of the office before one of the editors could assign her to write up the mayor's wife's teapot collection or some other equally pointless fluff piece.

Lois had bigger fish to fry. Fish that stood over six feet tall, with jet black hair and that answered to "Clark Kent." At least if the crazy questions that the Blur had asked had any basis in reality. Hopping into her car, she set out for Smallville, to answer some questions for once and for all.

_but if the rumors that they say are true_

Holding the journal, Lois felt as if the solid loft floor was giving way beneath her. Who was this Virgil Swann? Why were the symbols that were showing up all over the world catalogued in a notebook stored away with Clark's football memorabilia? What was Clark's relationship to all the mysteries of the Blur, anyway?

Lois might have pondered this endlessly had she not heard Clark's footsteps. Feigning innocence, she looked into eyes that seemed as guileless as her own. The patent lack of sincerity in his words hurt not nearly so much as the thought that Clark really wanted her to go to Africa.

_He's lying,_ she thought as she looked at his carefully composed expression. _The Blur must be right._

So with their goodbye hug, she slipped the small disk out of his pocket and into her own, then tried to walk away without letting him see her heart breaking anew.

_well I can't just sit and wait there must be something I can do_

Lois had no idea exactly how long she stood by the phone booth. Moments, maybe. Minutes, probably.

Staggered by a kiss? More likely all the implications Clark had conveyed in that embrace: the revelation of his identity was overshadowed by something deeper, bittersweet and worrisome. Lois knew kisses and that had not been your run of the mill kiss of happiness, relief or opportunity. No, that had been a goodbye kiss.

Her smile faded as she thought on Clark's clumsy intimations when they were at the Kent farm, that he really wanted her to go to Africa and work with Perry. "Damn it, Clark, you were being noble and sending me away before you went and did something stupid, weren't you?" she said to herself. Because even realizing that he was the Blur didn't make up for the fact that Lois knew Clark was a self-sacrificing kind of guy. And knowing that Zod had been playing her, maybe for weeks, meant not only that she'd been fooled, but that Clark had a smart and dangerous enemy.

She pulled her miraculously intact cellphone out of her purse without any clear plan of what she was doing, only to stare in surprise when she got no signal. The phone booth's handset gave her an unhelpful "All circuits are busy, please try again" message.

Without thinking, she broke into a jog, leaving behind her the wreck of scattered tulips and broken glass as she instinctively ran toward _The Planet_. Not to break the story of the Blur's secret identity, Lois was pretty good at keeping secrets, thankyouverymuch!, but because she hoped to gather some more information from the rest of the reporters working there that might help Clark in what she feared could be the fight of his life.

Before she'd gotten two blocks, a bright light rocketing up in the sky almost directly overhead made Lois stop in her tracks. "What the heck?" she wondered aloud as she looked up to the top of one of the city's tallest building, four blocks ahead, seeing a yellow glow pointing skyward, as if the largest floodlight in the world had suddenly been turned on.

"Smallville," she breathed as she raced toward the building with renewed purpose. Sneaking periodic glances at the lighted rooftop, she could dimly perceive brighter sparks shooting heavenward. The air burned on each inhalation as she raced toward the darkened doorways, mind racing as she plotted how to gain entrance.

But as she came within a few metres of the building, something drew her eyes skyward. There, up on the parapets, she could barely make out flailing motions on the edge of that streaming yellow light. "Please, no," Lois mouthed, staring up and willing it not to be what she feared.

As a dark form plummeted down from the misty heights, her heart beat with fear as much as exertion. She changed course, putting herself, for all the good it would do, on an intercept with the falling figure and prayed as she ran.


End file.
